Enterprise applications represent an important class of software applications ranging in functionality from supply chain management and customer relationship management to human resources and payroll management. While such applications are traditionally offered on a PC platform, recent studies have shown that knowledge workers typically spend only one-third of their time physically at their desk, but are very likely to possess smartphones. Such trends have motivated enterprises to strategically invest in application mobilization, where applications hitherto accessible only on PC platforms are made accessible from smartphones as well.
Application mobilization is done today using one of three different strategies: (i) homegrown solutions where enterprises directly invest resources in developing custom mobilized applications; (ii) third party solutions where application vendors such as SAP, Oracle and Microsoft provide mobilization platforms that can in-turn be used by enterprises to mobilize applications with appropriate configurations; and (iii) cross platform solutions like web applications that are compatible with multiple platforms including smartphones. The above methodologies to mobilization however come with their respective limitations as discussed next.
The typical goals of an enterprise for application mobilization are the following: (i) low cost/time to mobilization, (ii) no major functionality loss, (iii) user friendly, and (iv) minimal changes to IT. Unfortunately, homegrown solutions incur considerable time/cost overheads and require major changes to enterprise IT to manage a new class of applications; third party solutions incur more reasonable, but substantial, overheads to configure, typically have much reduced functionality if they come pre-designed, and require major changes to enterprise IT processes; and cross platform solutions are typically quite cumbersome to use as the interface is originally designed for the PC platform and can support only limited functionalities compared to natively developed applications.